How to Use Data to Power Your CTV Advertising Strategy

You can use CTV advertising to contribute to your overall business strategy and reach new audiences. The key to success is data. Learn more about what CTV advertising is and how data will power your success in this medium.

What Is CTV Advertising?

CTV advertising is advertising on TVs that can stream online content. The television might have built-in streaming capabilities, such as Smart TVs, or connect to the Internet via external devices, such as a Roku or Internet-connected gaming console.

While more traditional TV viewing requires cable or satellite services — otherwise known as linear TV — CTV allows users to stream content on-demand through services like Netflix, Hulu, DirectTV Stream and YouTube TV.

Like linear TV, CTV advertising benefits from a one-to-many approach. With one advertisement, you can reach multiple viewers watching the program. However, CTV advertising allows you to target your ads more directly than linear TV. 

Additionally, CTV is seeing tremendous growth. Studies have shown that 82% of American households with TVs have a CTV device, and viewership of CTV has increased so much that people now spend more time watching streamed content than broadcast or cable TV. In the face of such popularity, marketers are taking note.

CTV vs. OTT Advertising

CTV is a medium for over-the-top (OTT) advertising, which is any advertising placed in streamed content. OTT content uses Internet streaming to go “over the top” of, or bypass, cable or satellite connectivity. OTT capabilities enable consumers to watch videos in more ways and across more devices. 

Marketers can place OTT advertising on any Internet-connected device, including smartphones, tablets and laptops. CTV advertising, however, refers specifically to ads placed on Internet-connected TVs. In other words, CTV and OTT advertising have significant overlap, but CTV advertising is a specific type of OTT advertising.

6 Advantages of CTV Advertising

The CTV advertising space is a booming market because it brings marketers many benefits. 

Six advantages of CTV advertising are:

1. Reaches “cord-cutting” audiences: The number of Americans who say they watch cable or satellite dropped 20% from 2015 to 2021. With CTV, you can still reach a significant portion of these viewers who subscribe to streaming services. 
2. Provides a cost-effective means to advertise: While reaching premium networks on linear TV can be difficult and costly, CTV provides flexible pricing structures to leave you with more cost-effective options. For example, you can pay for CTV ads based on cost per metric or cost per completed view.
3. Opens opportunities for multi-device targeting: As viewers watch OTT streaming services across devices, you can complement your CTV ads by reaching your audiences on their phones or laptops. Multi-device advertising gets your message in front of your audience wherever they are, helping you forge a stronger connection.
4. Produces high completion rates: In North America, viewers watched 95% of CTV ads to completion. Get your ad seen in its entirety with CTV.
5. Allows for easy performance tracking: Because of the incredible data CTV provides, you can track ad performance metrics like completion frequency or website traffic. If you notice areas for improvement, you can adjust your ad as needed.
6. Protects brand image: CTV advertising empowers you to place highly relevant ads in the spots your audience is watching. Use this relevancy to reinforce your brand’s image, and keep up with performance tracking to continually measure how well your ad serves your brand.

Understanding CTV Measurement

One way CTV advertising differs from linear television is in its enhanced measurement capabilities. With linear TV, you cannot view performance metrics like how a customer engaged with the ad, or subsequent conversion rates. It’s also challenging to track consumer data and learn new information about your target audiences. Instead, these ads play at specific times of the day based on previous program ratings.

In contrast, CTV has many measurement capabilities to help you gauge the success of your campaigns. They also give you key insights into optimization possibilities. Here are some of the metrics you can access:

• Campaign impressions: One of the most straightforward metrics, your impression count tells you how many times a streaming service displayed your ad.
• Cost per thousand impression (CPM): CPM measures how much one thousand impressions costs you.
• Completion rate: An essential complement to impression metrics, your completion rate measures how many viewers watched your ad to completion.
• View-through rate (VTR): VTR tells you how often consumers viewed your ad to completion.
• Conversion attribution: Conversion attribution is how you’ll link your CTV ads to conversions, enabling you to measure your return on investment (ROI) effectively. Your identity graph will prove helpful at this stage.

How Can I Get Started With CTV Advertising?

If you’re ready to dive into CTV advertising and reap the benefits for your brand, a data strategy will be paramount to your success. Follow these steps before launching your campaign:

1. Optimize your target audience: You can maximize your success with CTV ads by appealing to a majority of households and customers. By monitoring current interests and other data trends, you can develop an ad that will gain traction with a wide range of consumers. Start by identifying the target or most frequent interest trends and adapting your campaign to fit. 
2. Determine KPIs: While CTV advertising gives you the data to track, you’ll need a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your business strategy to measure your performance.
3. Blend with other channels: Strategize upfront how your CTV ads will work in tandem with other channels. For example, you can use retargeting to get your message in front of viewers through search or social media. Track data across channels to implement multi-channel strategies effectively.
4. Prepare to report and attribute promotion: With CTV, you’ll need an identity graph to best measure your overall outcomes. An identity graph allows you to see all online interactions from each customer across channels in one place. For instance, this overview allows you to see whether a customer views your CTV ad and then makes a purchase on your website.

Increasing the Effectiveness of CTV Ad Campaigns

As you get started with CTV advertising campaigns, you can implement a few strategies to increase your campaigns’ effectiveness: 

• Try personalization: Dynamic technology and retargeting capabilities allow you to leverage personalization at scale with CTV. Personalization has many benefits for your campaign, such as increased viewer receptivity. The more engaged your consumers are, the more likely they will respond with action. For instance, they might download an app or complete a purchase.
• Test out multiple ad copy variations and creative: Because of CTV’s robust, real-time measurement capabilities, you can run multiple variations of your ad and receive performance data quickly. Use this to your advantage and run tests to determine which version performs the best. You could even test different combinations across audience segments to measure results within each group.
• Review audience data and targeting segments: Improve your CTV targeting by consistently reviewing audience data and analyzing whether you can strengthen your segmentation strategy.

Seize the CTV Opportunity With Lotame

Introducing Lotame CTV Viewership Audiences Amplified Across Digital Screens

Activate TV viewership audiences from CTV devices — including Smart TVs, set top boxes, gaming consoles and more —  to augment your marketing initiatives across digital screens. Lotame prepackaged CTV Viewership Audiences help media companies, agencies and brands unify and amplify messaging and push syndicated audiences to their DSP of choice. TV + digital audience activation has never been easier.

Lotame CTV Audiences Are Available in All Major DSPs

Choose from more than 200 addressable audiences categorized by Genre, Network, Show, Viewership Type and more.

All Lotame Addressable Audiences Are Available on CTV Inventory

All of Lotame’s audiences, ranging from demographics to interest and CTV viewership attributes, are available on CTV inventory! Access the audiences you’re looking to reach.